Day 1 of the Lazy Challenge was a success! I was able to wake up at 5 am with no problems (my body may have tried to sleep through my alarm though, but thankfully my husband was there to wake me up). When I set my alarm the night before and saw how little sleep I’d be getting, there were two things that I had going for me. 1) My husband wanted to wake up and go to work early today, so that was some extra motivation and 2) I made a deal with myself: if I did my 30 minute obligation and STILL wanted to go back to sleep, I could take a nap right after breakfast.

Having everything prepared well in advance made the ordeal much less daunting.

I was really surprised how well this first day went. Usually when I try to change my sleep schedule, it takes me about four days to adjust. This morning though, that was not the case.

I was really groggy when I first woke up, obviously, so to get myself going, I started by washing my face with cold water, brushing my teeth, and brushing my hair. These were little tasks that I felt minor accomplishment when completing (and yes, the cold water helped), but it gave me the momentum I needed to get to everything else.

The artwork itself was a bit challenging. Instead of drawing something in my sketchbook with a standard pencil, I drew using white colored pencil on colored paper. This is a subversion from my usual sketching habits. I think this helped push my brain, but maybe for the first day next time, I might start something a little less strenuous.

Welp. This was supposed to be a quick thing, but I’ll see you guys tomorrow! Hopefully tomorrow will be as easy as today, but I highly doubt it.

I thought 7 Day Lazy Challenge sounded catchier than the 7 Day Productive Laziness challenge.

Let’s begin.

Due to excessive burnout at my full-time job, my art habits that I’ve worked so hard to foster kind of fell by the wayside. Before, I was waking up at 5 am every day, painting, and leaving for work without feeling rushed. Unfortunately, it’s been getting harder and harder to wake up and I’ve found myself going days without painting or drawing. In fact, I lost interest in doing so.

I took a week long staycation to help rest up and get myself on track, and while I was starting to feel like my old self and get art done, I still haven’t gotten quite back into my old, good habits. Although, 7 am is still a good time to wake up, even if it’s sleeping in for me.

For the past several months, I’ve been taking notes from College Info Geek and The Art of Manliness to help find ways I could improve my motivation, stop procrastinating, and hopefully, turn my artistic passion into a part time job that makes enough money to pay bills. The advice I’ve been hearing is this: be lazy!

What does that mean? How can being lazy help you achieve your goals?

Think about it. If everybody didn’t have the proclivity to be lazy, we would all be working to our full potential, we probably would have had the flying car built centuries ago if more people used their free time to work hard, be productive, and achieve their dreams. Unfortunately, only a very few people in this world have the discipline to do so and even fewer succeed.

Look back on yourself, if you spent the time you’ve been playing video games or binge watching to learn new skills, improve yourself, or workout, I don’t have a doubt you would in a better place than where you are now!

But, again, humans are lazy. We would rather do easy and fun things than hard things for the unforeseeable, long term rewards improving our skills would give. We can clearly picture ourselves as more successful people (whatever your definition might be), but again and again we make excuses, procrastinate, and opt to do fun easy things instead.

That’s why it makes to rather than fight the urge to be lazy… we work with it! We make it super easy to get started on the things we want to do, and make the distractions less convenient!

Starting tomorrow, I plan to get up at 5 am paint for 30 minutes, and write a short blog post in order to report on my progress!

Day 0: Preparation!

Day 0 is very important. It requires a little bit of self reflection… and this actually the day where you’re not lazy: you’re getting breakfasts ready, you’re getting your work space ready, you’re finding ways to stay comfortable, and you’re eliminating your distractions.

1. Have your alarm ready!

How are you waking up in the morning? Do you hit the snooze button again and again until you have to leave for work/class five minutes before it actually starts? This would be a good time to think about how you would like to get up. There are several alarm apps out there that make you do things before the alarm goes off such as taking a certain number of steps, taking a picture, doing math problems, etc.

I do a combination of a couple things to get up early. I always put my phone on the other side of my room, and I have the app, Alarmy, on the setting where you have to take a photo before the noise turns off. I used to take a picture of my vitamins in the bathroom medicine cabinet so that I can start the day washing my face and brushing my teeth, but my body adapted so it was easier for me to take a picture, then go back to bed.

I changed my strategy to instead take a picture of the coffee maker so that I can instead be tempted by the smell of coffee (with the added benefit of the kitchen being a slightly longer walk than the bathroom) and start the day with the caffeine boost. So far, that’s been working for getting up at 7 am.

2. Make Breakfast(s)!

It’s important that whatever you want to do to achieve your goals, you start with a good breakfast. Even if you’re not hungry. There’s been a lot of studies done, and people are more effective in the morning, especially after eating a breakfast high in fat and protein.

For the laziness challenge, it’s better if you have breakfast all ready to go. Maybe you might want a nice, hot breakfast with fried eggs and bacon, but if you had the willpower to do that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now.

Today, I’m going to hard boil 14 eggs! Two for each day of the Laziness Challenge! Eggs are cheap, quick, and come pre-packaged by Mrs. Chicken. They are high in fat and protein which is what we’ll need to get the day started.

Welp… We’re off to a great start. I dropped the pot, cracked most of them, and I forgot how to count.

7 cans of Tuna could work too. Also cheap, also quick. Kinda smelly though.

Of course, you could have 7 yogurt cups, or, if you want to get REALLY fancy, make 7 cups of plain yogurt, fruit, and nuts/granola in some kind of container (recycled glass jars, cheap mason jars from IKEA, or plastic cups if you have a bunch leftover from a wedding you had… not because you hate the environment obviously…). Actually, after I do the 7 day challenge with hardboiled eggs, I might just do another 7 day challenge with daily yogurts! That sounds amazing right now!

And not to leave out the vegan artists either… though I don’t know much about the vegan diet. Avacados are probably your best bet with a lot of nuts/beans for protein.

3. Eliminate Excuses.

If there’s a reason the things you want to do are the slightest bit inconvenient, your body will do everything it can to put it off or not do it. For me, the biggest barrier is my studio. It’s pretty well ventilated, which means it’s very cold. Which means I would rather be anywhere but in there.

That is why I have a special jacket that I got from Target for cheap many years ago: it’s warm, but I don’t mind getting paint on it. I also have special sweatpants in there in case I need extra warmth for my legs.

The point is, try to find reasons why you “don’t” want to work and do anything you can to eliminate that excuse. You’re clever! You’ll find a solution!

4. Have your Materials Ready!

One of the reasons I think we don’t like improving our skills is because of how daunting it is. You have to get up, make breakfast, then open some books, or find the websites you need online. If you’re an artist, you have to make your way to the studio, grab your sketchbook, you might not even know what you want to draw. It’s just too much. It would be better to go back to bed…

…unless, you just had everything ready to go that morning already!

For art block…

If you’re up first thing in the morning, in theory all of your creative juices should be flowing in that river of grogginess (apparently, people are more creative when they’re groggy). If that turns out to be as ridiculous as that sounds, don’t worry! There are things to get you going.

An important part of art is practicing! Go online, find art tutorials (Have 7 tutorials bookmarked today! One for each day!)

I enjoy drawing using references from old master paintings, plus I have a couple paintings I want to do in the long term, so I went online, found paintings similar to the painting I want to create, and if I’m not feeling up for painting, I will have my sketchbook, pencils, etc set up and ready to go!

References? Check! Paper? Check! Pencils? Check!

If you’re doing something online…

…like learning a new language, learning to program, or anything else that requires the computer, I would highly recommend having your websites, YouTube tutorials, programs, etc, bookmarked or set as your home page or otherwise ready to go the night before.

What about social media sites, Netflix, or other fun sites that waste your time and prevent you from getting work done?

One site I’m looking is StayFocusd, which blocks websites you don’t want to be distracted by for a certain period of time.

There’s also a NUCLEAR OPTION, where you have a limited number of sites you do want to stay on, and it blocks all other sites.

I wish there was a version of Stayfocusd for YouTube channels. It would be nice if somebody could figure out a way to temporarily prevent you from watching YouTube channels except for the videos you’re watching to improve your skills. But, for now, we’ll stick to what we have.

Since my activity has nothing to do with the PC, I installed Forest which prevents me from using social media for a certain amount of time (which I will set to 30 minutes).

Forest work by giving you a virtual tree that grows the longer you leave your phone alone. If you want to use social media, you have to kill your tree first.

You don’t want to be a monster who kills trees.

Do you?

Ashley???

One of the nice things about this app is that the more these “trees” you grow, the bigger your forest gets. Seeing all those trees establishes a sense of pride and accomplishment… with more immediate rewards which we established earlier is something that we as humans love.

One downside is that while it blocks many sites including social media and games, it doesn’t block YouTube or in-phone texting. If you really want to be productive, especially for the first week, you may have delete your most distracting apps unless you really need them for work (which is unlikely, let’s be honest).

For this entry, I drew four lips from Old Master paintings. The reason why I included an exercise involving Old Master art is because I believe studying their techniques helps improve your art style. You can almost see how they held their pencils, what colors they used, and how they achieved a semi-realistic image.

So, no side by side because the image is in a private collection and copy-righted, but you can see the original here.

So, some reflections. I did this on my lunch break, in the middle of the day, so it was a nice break away from work. I also need to get an actual printer/scanner at some point. My phone takes good pictures, but you can tell it’s a photo on a non-flat sketchbook. If I do this prompt again, I think I’m going to take the original portraits (as long as they’re not copy-righted), and use Photoshop to put the lips I drew over the portraits to keep it fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time, but I’m jotting this down so that I remember to do it again or hopefully if you guys are doing this exercise with me, you can do that!

Thanks for following my journey to improve this aspect of the face. Stick around for more!

Haven’t had a chance to get the paint I need. I know I will not tomorrow because I have a long day of classes ahead of me tomorrow. So, I decided to draw a portrait instead.

This is Madonna from Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Madonna of the Rocks”. Like in the spirit of Da Vinci, whose sketchbooks are filled with the same drawings over and over of the same studies he did before even touching the canvas, I’m going to draw this portrait again tomorrow, and then paint it on Wednesday when I finally have my time and resources.

So, being in the city of art and beauty, I’ve been inspired to dedicate myself to doing so. I did a 30 Portrait in 30 Days challenge a while back, and I believe it really helped my skill a ton. Also, I think it’s important to note, that I failed this earlier year’s 30 Portraits in 30 Days as I was about 8 portraits short, so we’ll see how this goes.

I’m going to do this by copying painted portraits first, then moving to photographs, then hopefully live portraits if I can find someone willing to sit still for long periods at a time (even if it’s only myself).